++Never give a vampire cause for revenge. A popular saying, and like all popular sayings there is a nugget of truth to it. The fact is that giving a vampire cause for revenge is not the issue, so much as giving a long-lived being of intellect that same purpose. Creatures that measure their lives in centuries, let alone millennia, are a scourge when offence is given to them. Be they vampire, spirit…or elf. ++

  Book 2: Chapter 22

  Evych had been killed. Oleri watched it happen just seconds before she returned to the melee, saw him fall as his blood frothed away and his strength left him. There were only half a dozen thralls left, but with two of them now boasting Circumscriber blades and the damned ex-Witchfinder helping, it wasn't looking good. It was all Yvrai could do to fend them off for the last second Oleri needed to join the fight.

  She screamed as she swung, despite herself. It went against everything she’d been trained to do, all the cold discipline that was so vitally important for any true killer, but the fact that these animals were still living after killing three elves was one indignity too many.

  Of course, her swing missed too. The damned vampire ducked back as if he’d been told it was coming an hour in advance. Eyes in the back of his head, that one. He twisted around, then surprised Oleri by shooting her again. How many damned pistols did he have? No matter, it was still just a short-arm and the tiny ball of hardened lead splintered on her cheek like a clump of thrown dirt. Without the surprise of this shot she wasn’t even stunned, and wasted no time in chasing after him.

  He put up a surprisingly good defence. Slower, weaker. He wasn’t tiring, though, and Oleri was. And yet the advantage was hers a dozen times over, he was just too inexperienced with the blade. In ten years maybe he’d have made a fight of it, and in a hundred he might have even won. There was talent, she thought. But talent alone was dust. In seconds the Witchfinder’s sword went flying from his hand, then his hand went flying from his wrist. She stepped in to finish him when he flicked the stump out and sent blood splashing into her face.

  Right into the fucking eyes, again.

  She felt something slash at her wrist, sharp and painful. Just as Oleri’s vision cleared to confirm the sight, it was too late. Already the vampire’s talons were digging into her skin as he smashed his body against hers, slipped a leg behind her knee and…failed to send her down. He had all the momentum and leverage, but Strength alone was holding her in place just as Toughness warded off those vampiric claws from severing the tendons of her arm. From the corner of her eye Oneri saw a thrall swinging his blade down—a stolen Circumscriber sword—just in time to lift her free arm and halt it painfully by letting the metal bite down just above her elbow. The edge sunk at least an inch half into her flesh before stopping, then worked its way another half inch deeper as he dragged it back. Blood spilled, Oleri roared and decided she’d had enough.

  Her headbutt caught the grappling vampire right in his face, and probably shattered every bone above his neck.

  ***

  “Animal!” the Wizard shrieked. “Monster!”

  Reggie had a really good and witty come-back in mind, but unfortunately his mouth was too full of the elf’s ribcage to say it. Instead he just kept biting. If he chewed deep enough he’d reach the lungs, and his enemy wouldn’t be able to keep insulting him because the things he needed to speak would end up getting filled with blood. That was as good a way to win an argument as any.

  Something hard ended up getting in the way of Reggie’s teeth, and almost before he’d even registered it they cut through. It was, he realised, a rib. Apparently the stuff beneath that rib was of particular bodily import, because no sooner had his jaws shut than the elf started spasming, shit himself more violently than Reggie had known a person could, and promptly failed to keep holding them aloft in the air.

  They fell about five or six hundred feet, though Reggie was fortunate enough to land on a nice and soft elf rather than the hard cobbles.

  “Are you okay?” he asked the elf.

  “Shashafsabsjasgnahsbgyh,” he replied. Reggie couldn’t be sure, but it sounded like he was asking him to drain the last of his blood before he died. Never heartless enough to deny a dying man his last wish, he bit down and finished draining. It went a lot easier now, with the elf immobilised and both of them grounded he could dedicate all his Blood Magic to drawing the stuff out of his veins.

  Tier 4 combatant devoured

  +1 Celerity

  +1 Toughness

  +1 Strength

  +1 Charisma

  +1 Speed

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  .

  Progress to next Tier, 4/250 creatures drained. 0/10 years passed.

  Secret challenge completed; “Brain Eater”. Reward: Magical Ability improvement, select between Blood Magic or Necromancy to strengthen.

  Reggie took almost no time at all to make that choice.

  “Necromancy,” he said. His forces were diminishing fast and he didn’t have time to linger, but long-term he figured being able to more readily control and create the undead would help keep his territory more.

  Name: Reginald Smith

  Age: 21

  Race: Vital Arcanist [Inheritor Race, Tier 3]

  Class: None

  Attributes:

  (S)Strength 51(+12)/56

  (P)Speed 51(+12)/62

  (P)Celerity 50(+12)/62

  (S)Toughness 50(+12)/56

  (P)Charisma 27(-12)/62

  Abilities:

  Blood Magic II

  Form of the Beast II

  Royal Presence I

  Necromancy II

  Traits:

  Enhanced Senses I

  Regeneration II

  Addictive Ichor

  Enhanced Magick I

  Reggie was already sprinting to the big knot of combat still left by the time Sycily updated his Sheet, and he was only halfway there when he regretted not choosing Blood Magic. There were two Circumscribers left and the human defenders were gaining courage every moment. No more than a third of them were engaged, but most of those were soldiers and the fight was slipping away from him fast.

  His first thought, the logical one, was to help the thralls fighting one of two remaining Circumscribers. The elf looked hurt, but he still had the upper-hand. If Reggie could dispatch him then there’d be one more magic blade among the attackers and one less on the enemy’s side. Instinct ended up winning when he saw Ludvich’s skull smashed inwards by the nastiest headbutt Reggie had ever seen.

  It was the leader of the Circumscriber squad responsible for his death who did it, of course. Like the world was laughing at him.

  Well Reggie would just laugh right back. He still didn’t have his own enchanted sword and didn’t have time to find it, instead settling for the body he’d relied on all this time. Just as the Circumscriber captain took the head off a thrall aiming to do the same to her, Reggie leapt into the air and lashed both his heels out in a flying kick that caught her directly in the chest.

  She just left the battlefield, pretty much, was how hard he kicked her. In a single moment of impact the elf turned into a screaming, spinning projectile that soared right to the town’s outer wall and barely stopped on impact. Huh. There was a hole right next to where she hit. Reggie wondered what had caused that, some idiot with no control probably.

  He didn’t concern himself with that question for much longer though.

  ***

  Ludvich could feel his skull reshaping itself. Bizarre, and not at all pleasant. The bones were pressing down into places bone had never meant to press, and he was entirely sure that, were he still a living man, he’d already be either dead or left a drooling moron. Perhaps in the latter case, he’d have joined the rest of Norvhan in attacking Reggie.

  But he was undead, and so not nearly as destructible as mortal man. That didn’t mean that having his forehead smashed inwards was any minor concern, however.

  His arms still weren’t obeying him.

  With a roar that came out as a groan and a snarl that escaped as a whimper, Ludvich started to sit up. His brain matter was running down his face like lumpy gravy, and it was getting harder to see. What bits of the brain were in the front again? Hard to remember. Something about elves that needed doing. Elves…

  An elf’s head came apart as Reggie scraped his talons across it, cleaving through skull and distributing brain matter a good deal farther than Ludvich’s own had been. The Circumscriber died, obviously, dropping down just as Ludvich finished coming up, and by his ability to remember the elf’s title and move both arms it seemed his head was mostly fixed.

  He put the newfound mobility to good use by making a beeline for the nearest of the human soldiers, none of whom appeared to have yet quite realised just how fucked they were. Ludvich could’ve torn the man’s throat out, but figured that the fighting was all but done now and instead hit him in the shoulder. There was a lot of Strength behind the blow, and his fist made something crack in that magic spot between the neck and chest where bones were so thin and vulnerable. The soldier went down with a scream, spurring one of his allies on to whirl around and stab at Ludvich with a pike.

  Pikes. Not a weapon Ludvich was unfamiliar with, of course, though a soldier’s variant was different from his. The crossguard was thinner and the whole thing lighter but longer, made to gain an advantage of reach on the battlefield rather than prop against the ground and gut a vast magical beast with its own weight and momentum.

  That was just fine by Ludvich, as one of those magical beasts himself now. He got inside the weapon’s reach fast, snatched it from the wielder and punched the man.

  “Your elves are dead,” he hissed. “Give up now and you’ll all get to live.”

  The recipient of his words probably didn’t hear them, on account of being unconscious, but plenty of the other soldiers did. They looked around, as if realising only then how fucked they all were.

  Which was to say, very fucked. Most of Reggie’s thralls were dead now, maybe three remained, while practically all of his reanimates had been snuffed out too. And yet even as Ludvich watched, more of the casualties rose to join the other peelers. Meanwhile the enemy was down all but one of their elves, and as Ludvich looked around to locate the renegade he saw her staring in abject horror and slowly backing away.

  No, he’d been wrong. They hadn’t started winning. They’d won.

  All around men were throwing down weapons; pikes and muskets joining one another in the mud as undead loomed close and raised weapons. Reggie’s face twisted for a moment, concentration, Ludvich thought, and the peelers all halted their advance. While the surrender was still unfolding, Ludvich tried to make an estimate of how many people still lived.

  Or rather, of how many had died.

  It was impossible to count precisely, that much became clear fast. Ludvich gave up around the thirtieth corpse, where bodies started to deteriorate in condition badly enough that it was hard to separate one from another with just a glance. He realised the true count didn’t matter. They’d be getting a more deliberative tally made and recorded later on. They’d have the chance to take their time with anything.

  Because Norvhan was Reggie’s, now.